2025 Domestic Hotel Industry Leading Companies Financial Review: "One Super" Crowned, "Three Strong" Fall Behind, No More "Four Major Giants" in the Hotel Industry

Every Daily reporter | Shu Dongni    Every Daily editor | Bi Luming

In 2025, the trend of differentiation among leading hotel industry players in China has become even more evident.

Huazhu Group, Atour Group, Jinjiang Hotels, and Capital City Hotels—once grouped together as the hotel industry’s “Four Great Giants”—are no longer moving in lockstep. According to 2025 financial reports, Huazhu Group is far ahead with revenue of 25.307 billion yuan and net profit of 5.08 billion yuan. Meanwhile, the former industry leader Jinjiang Hotels saw net profit fall below 10 billion yuan, and Capital City Hotels even recorded net profit of just 810 million yuan, the lowest among the group.

At the same time, Atour Group has surged into the top position with nearly 10 billion yuan in revenue and over 1.6 billion yuan in net profit, and the “one super and many strong” pattern has been firmly established. As the scale keeps running faster and faster, it gets harder for individual stores to make money. When room reservations start to hit limits, pillows and bedding have become the new battleground.

The “one super and many strong” pattern is taking shape

In 2025, with revenue of 25.307 billion yuan and net profit of 5.08 billion yuan, Huazhu Group remained far ahead and became the only company among the four leading enterprises whose revenue exceeded 20 billion yuan and whose net profit exceeded 5 billion yuan. Both its scale and profitability have formed clear absolute advantages, and its “one super” position is solid.

Atour Group has demonstrated strong growth momentum. In 2025, its revenue rose from 1.567 billion yuan in 2019 to 9.79 billion yuan, and its net profit reached 1.621 billion yuan. Its size and profitability are already nearly catching up with the traditional second-tier group, making it the biggest variable in the industry’s landscape.

In 2025, Jinjiang Hotels recorded revenue of 13.81 billion yuan and net profit of approximately 925 million yuan; Capital City Hotels’ revenue edged down slightly to 7.61 billion yuan, and its net profit was only 810 million yuan. Neither company has returned to the 2019 level, and the gap with Huazhu has widened further—net profit has already fallen below 1 billion yuan.

The hotel industry has been reshaped in recent years, evolving into a “one super and many strong, with polarization between extremes” landscape. Huazhu Group has forged ahead, Atour Group has risen strongly, and both Jinjiang Hotels and Capital City Hotels have fallen behind in both revenue and profits, with the gap widening day by day. The former “Four Great Giants” no longer move forward together.

Industry shows more volume but weaker pricing

In recent years, the continuous increase in the chain conversion rate has always been the main theme in the hotel industry. According to the “2025 China Hotel Industry Development Report” released by the China Hotel and Restaurant Association, by the end of 2024, China’s total stock of hotel rooms reached 17.6432 million rooms, and the room chain rate was 40.09%. The chain rates for economy, mid-range, upscale, and luxury hotels were 29.96%, 55.33%, 44.70%, and 57.98%, respectively.

During the chain expansion process, hotel listed companies are the main force. Together, Huazhu Group, Atour Group, Jinjiang Hotels, and Capital City Hotels account for more than 60% of the total number of rooms in chained hotels nationwide. However, the scale tiers have already diverged—Jinjiang Hotels and Huazhu Group both have more than 1 million rooms, Capital City Hotels has 550,000 rooms, and Atour Group has just crossed the threshold of 220,000 rooms. Overall, concentration among leading players continues to rise.

It is worth noting that behind the rapid expansion in scale, the contradiction of “more volume but weaker pricing” has become increasingly prominent. This reflects that core indicators of operating quality at individual stores have generally been trending downward, becoming a key bottleneck restricting the industry’s high-quality development. Taking Atour Group as an example, its 2025 average daily rate (ADR) was 432 yuan, slightly down from 437 yuan in 2024; its occupancy rate was 75.9%, down from 77.4% in the previous year.

Other companies are no exception. In 2025, Jinjiang Hotels and Capital City Hotels both saw their average room rates and occupancy rates decline to varying degrees; Huazhu Group’s average room rate increased slightly by 0.2% compared with 2024, but its occupancy rate fell by 1.2 percentage points, and RevPAR (revenue per available room, average) declined by 1.3%.

Retail has become the new battleground

Faced with the difficulties of pressure on same-store room business, in 2025 hotel groups also began to break away from the traditional model of relying on selling rooms alone for profit. They focused on extending beyond accommodation scenarios and actively expanded non-room business.

As a hotel group that deployed new retail earliest, Atour Group’s non-room business—i.e., its retail business—has been particularly eye-catching, becoming its core advantage in differentiated competition. According to its financial report, in 2025 Atour Group’s retail business revenue reached 3.671 billion yuan, a year-over-year increase of 67.0%, accounting for nearly 40% of the group’s total revenue. It has become the second-largest revenue segment after its hotel management business. This portion of revenue mainly comes from the sale of goods extended from the lodging experience, with bedding as the core.

Other leading hotel groups are also actively exploring non-room business areas. In 2025, Huazhu Group and Capital City Hotels both rolled out new retail for hotel bedding. Huazhu Group introduced its self-developed “Huazhu Hui M3 memory pillow” on March 21, 2025, World Sleep Day, and promoted and sold it via its membership and supply-chain platform, “Huazhu Mall.” Capital City Hotels, meanwhile, launched hotel-standard products such as bedding and personal care items on its app “Preferred Mall.” From an industry perspective, the hotel sector is accelerating its shift toward digital transformation and diversified operations, and value-added services—including retail—are becoming a new growth engine for hotel groups.

Overall, in 2025 China’s hotel industry is moving forward steadily amid the contradictions between scale expansion and quality improvement. “More volume but weaker pricing” is the main characteristic of the industry in its current stage, and it also reflects the urgency of industry transformation. The rapid growth of non-room business provides a new path for the industry to break through its development bottlenecks. However, how to achieve a balance between scale expansion and store-level profitability, and how to shift non-room business from “incremental supplementation” to “core pillar,” remain key issues that leading hotel groups will still need to address in the future. (Intern Chen Siqing also contributed to this article)

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